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Killer in the family podcast
A true crime podcast exploring men who kill their families.
Killer in the family podcast
Episode 66 - The Romand Family
In January 1993, a house fire tore through the Romand family home in Prévessin-Moëns, near the French-Swiss border. Inside, Florence Romand and her two young children, Antoine and Caroline, were dead. Jean-Claude Romand — husband, father, and apparent survivor — was clinging to life. But what first looked like a devastating accident quickly unravelled into something far darker: the calculated murder of an entire family and the exposure of a man who had spent his life living a lie. Jean-Claude Romand wasn’t just a killer — he was a master deceiver who had faked his career, manipulated those closest to him, and, in a final act of horror, murdered his wife, children, and parents to stop the truth from coming out. He survived, was convicted, and in 2019, after 26 years behind bars, walked free.
This is the story of the Romand Family.
Information and support
· Samaritans UK Contact Us | Samaritans
· National Domestic Violence Helpline UK 0808 2000 247
· Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse (AAFDA) Home - AAFDA
· Women’s Aid Home - Women's Aid
· National Domestic Abuse Helpline UK 0808 2000 247
· Mental health support USA Mental Health America | Homepage | Mental Health America
· Domestic abuse helpline USA 1.800.799.SAFE Domestic Violence Support | National Domestic Violence Hotline
References
The Adversary: Amazon.co.uk: Carrere, Emmanuel, Coverdale, Linda: 9780747551898: Books
Jean-Claude Romand | Murderpedia, the encyclopedia of murderers
Jean-Claude Romand: Fake French doctor who killed family is free - BBC News
Jean-Claude Romand: The fake doctor turned family annihilator | by Ominous Nights | Medium
Deadly fantasist | | The Guardian
Credits
Hosted and created by Clare Laxton @ladylaxton
Produced by: Clare Laxton
Killer in the family podcast (buzzsprout.com)
Music from Pixabay.
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Hi there and welcome to Killer in the Family podcast. I'm your host, claire Laxton. Welcome to episode 66 of Kill it In the Family podcast. I've actually just confirmed a really exciting guest for the pod in a couple of weeks, so keep an eye out for that episode. In the meantime, let's get straight into it.
Speaker 1:In January 1993, a house fire tore through the Romand family home in Preve Simones near the French-Swiss border. Inside, florence Romand and her two children, antoine and Caroline, were dead. Jean-claude Romand husband, father and a parent survivor was clinging to life, but what first looked like a devastating accident quickly unraveled into something far darker the calculated murder of an entire family and the exposure of a man who'd spent his life living a lie. Jean-claude Romand wasn't just a killer. He was a master deceiver who had faked his career, manipulated those closest to him and, in his final act of terror, murdered his wife, children and parents to stop the truth from coming out. He survived, was convicted and in 2019, after 26 years behind bars, walked free.
Speaker 1:This is the story of the Romand family. This is going to be a really tough listen team. Not only is it a story of horrific familicide, but also one of decades of lies and twists and turns. The story takes place in France and I have tried my best, as usual, with pronunciations. I know that we have some native French speakers who are listeners, so please let me know any glaring errors. As usual, there are links to information and support, if you need it, in the episode notes, as are links to all my sources. There is a book on this case called the Adversary by Emmanuel Carré, translated by Linda Coverdale, which I've used for this episode too.
Speaker 1:So let's start by talking about Florence. Interestingly, I had to read through about five or six online articles about this case before actually finding out the name of Florence. In all these articles about what Romain did, she was just constantly referred to as his wife. I mean, for flip's sake, this is just another classic example of the media response to familicide, centering the perpetrator and not the victims. Anyway, thankfully I did learn Florence's name and more about her as well.
Speaker 1:So Florence Correlet was born on March the 6th in 1956. Now I couldn't find out loads about her childhood, but according to a Medium article, she attended the University of Lyon and studied medicine there, with ambitions of becoming a doctor. Now, clearly, florence was a very intelligent and ambitious young woman. I can't imagine. Many women were attending university in the 1970s in France to study medicine, and it was at the University of Lyon that Florence met a fellow medical student called Jean-Claude Romand.
Speaker 1:Romand was born on February the 11th 1954, in a town called Clairvaux-les-Lacs, which was a town in the southeast of France, again near the border of Switzerland, about 80 miles north of Lyon. According to the Guardian article, romain's father ran a farm there, and quote neighbours, cousins, school teachers. All remember a well-behaved little boy, quiet and sweet, whom some are tempted to describe as too well-behaved, too quiet and too sweet. An only child, perhaps somewhat overprotected by his mother. Now, because their mother worried a lot, romain learned to maybe bend the truth a bit to not worry her. He was also said to want to emulate his father, who sort of rarely showed his feelings, and learned that it was better to conceal them Before heading to the University of Lyon to study medicine. Apparently, romain wanted to be a forester of the industry, of his family, but changed his mind and chose to study medicine. He studied alongside his friend that he met at university and fellow medical student, luc L'Admiral. He'll become important later on in this episode, student Luc L'Admiral. He'll become important later on in this episode.
Speaker 1:Now, according to media, romain and Florence were actually very distant cousins. So they sort of vaguely knew each other and apparently Romain instantly fell for Florence when they met again at medical school in Lyon. But Florence wasn't as instantly enamored. They did begin sort of studying together. As instantly enamoured, they did begin sort of studying together and Romain did all he could to convince Florence to go out with him, which she did, and they started dating. Now, at the end of their second years, florence's and Romain's educational paths sort of diverged somewhat. She actually failed her second year exam so decided to change from medicine to pharmacy, while Romain and his friend Luc both passed their exams and kept studying over the next few years together. It was at this point that Romain started keeping a secret that would define the next 18 years of his and his family's life.
Speaker 1:Now Florence and Romain graduated and they married in 1980. They started their married life together, with Florence picking jobs up at the local pharmacies, and Romain actually got a job at the renowned World Health Organization or the WHO, which was based in Geneva. Now the couple lived in southeast France near the Swiss border, so it was just a sort of hour and a half away from Geneva. Their friend from medical school, luc, became a GP in the nearby town of Ferne-Voltaire and according to the Guardian, luc said about Romain's career that quote Jean-Claude had become a leading figure in the world of medical research, hobnobbing with government ministers, always off at international conferences. And in the late 1980s Florence and Romain welcomed their first child into their family, caroline, and a couple of years later they welcomed their second child, antoine. Caroline was just seven years old when she was killed by her father and Antoine was just three years old when he was killed by her father. And Antoine was just three years old when he was killed by his father.
Speaker 1:All in all, at this point the Romain seemed to live an ordinary, happy life in southeast France. Romain would drop the kids off at school every day and then head to the WHO office in Geneva. He would sometimes be away because he was travelling for conferences, but more often than not he would be home every day with the family. Saying that, florence would often comment that her husband was very compartmentalised in his life. He kept his family and professional lives very separate and would rarely talk about like what he was researching at work or anything about work. Really, florence didn't even have an office number for him. If she wanted to talk to him during the day, she would call an answering service, and then he would call her back.
Speaker 1:Now, in addition to working at the WHO, remond also invested money for friends and family. Romand also invested money for friends and family. He would say that, as he was an international civil servant, he was able to take advantage of a huge interest rate on investments in Geneva, and one of the first people to invest with Romand was his father-in-law, pierre Crolet. He had just retired, and so Romand invested nearly 400,000 francs for him into an account in Geneva, an account that was in Ramon's name, not Pierre's, by the way. Now there's a really this is a really interesting sort of side story to this episode, so bear with me on this one. When Pierre wanted to withdraw some money from his investments to buy a car, ramon was apparently a bit evasive about that. Hmm, maybe he'd spent all the money already and there was an actual no investment at all. Anyway, a few weeks later, with this sort of investment still unresolved, pierre sadly fell down the stairs in his house and died. Now, although Ramond insisted that he had nothing to do with his father-in-law's death, it proved pretty favourable to him, because not only did he not have to give Pierre any of investment back, but his mother-in-law decided to sell their family home and gave Ramond 1.3 million francs from the sale to invest as well. So he did pretty well out of this situation. Now, we'll never know what happened to Pierre Corle, but it does seem more than slightly suspicious that he accidentally died at the same time that he was demanding some money back from his son-in-law. Now, someone else that Ramon took an investment from was someone that his wife, florence, didn't know the full story about, and, as we often say on this podcast, all was not as it seemed in the family, and the happy, normal French suburban family appeared to be anything but.
Speaker 1:Corinne Houtin was a woman who lived in the same town as the Ladmerals with her then-husband Remy and two girls. She socialised with Luc, his wife Cécile, and Florence and Romand, and when her and Remy split up amid rumours of affairs on both sides of the marriage, according to the Adversary book, she took her girls to live in Paris. She took her girls to live in Paris. Soon after the split, ramon got in touch with her to arrange dinner in Paris and so start an affair when they would meet weekly in Paris for dinner. The affair ended when she decided that she didn't really love Ramon and actually said that he was too sad. But they kept in touch and Ramon actually confided in his friend Luke about his affair. And, according to the Guardian, when Ramon talked to Luke about his mistress Corrine and throwing his life with his family away, luke made him see sense and stay with his family. But after they had broken up, as I said, they did stay in touch.
Speaker 1:And Corrine was another person who invested with Romand. Now I found two sources who says that she gave him 900,000 francs and one that said 90,000 francs to invest. So no matter the amount, it was a huge amount of money. So either around 800,000 pounds or 80,000 pounds. And apparently in 1992, when she wanted her investment back, she found Romain to be extremely evasive, much like his late father-in-law found so in the early 1990s. Here was the Romain family a normal, happy family with two children getting by and enjoying life. Yet something sinister was lying just beneath the surface. According to a Medium article, in December 1992, during an ordinary day, florence ran into her children's school's head teacher. He spoke to Florence about a school board issue and told her that when his secretary had tried to get hold of her husband, as he was on the school board, neither his phone number nor his name was in the directory of the WHO. Florence left it off to the headteacher, but it ate away at her and she resolved to ask Romand about it later on that evening. That headteacher would never see or speak to Florence again.
Speaker 1:On the 11th of January 1993, bin collectors in Previson Mones noticed that a house on their usual route was on fire. They called emergency services immediately and they attended to put the fire out. Once the fire had been dealt with, emergency services entered the house and found Florence, caroline and Antoine dead and Romand clinging to life. Luc L'Admiral was called early that morning and he drove over to the house. He actually got there in time to see Florence, who was being brought out of the house, and noticed that she had blood in her hair, which seemed really strange for someone who had died in a fire. He then saw the dead bodies of Caroline and Antoine being brought out of the house and finally he saw Ramond being taken to hospital. And there started for him, for Luke, probably one of the strangest times of his life. That same day an uncle went to Ramond's parents' house to tell them what had happened in this horrible fire, but inside their home he found both Ramon's parents and their family dog dead. They had been murdered. The autopsies of Florence, caroline and Antoine found that it wasn't actually the fire that had killed them at all. Florence was killed by blunt force trauma to her head and Caroline and Antoine had been shot and killed.
Speaker 1:The police immediately started an investigation and started questioning friends, families and colleagues of the romance. No one could think of any reason why anyone would want this well-liked and upstanding family harmed, any reason why anyone would want this well-liked and upstanding family harmed, never mind dead. All this time, the one person who could maybe shed some light onto the situation, jean-claude Raymond, lay in a coma in hospital. When he awoke he started talking and the truth finally came out. This is what happened over those horrific days in January 1993.
Speaker 1:Friday, the 8th of January, started normally enough. Roman took Caroline and Antoine to school, but instead of going to work at the WHO, he instead went into town and went to the shops to pick up a few things. His purchases included two petrol cans and supposedly like a rolling pin as well. Roman filled both cans of petrol at a nearby service station. According to the adversary book, after the children had finished school, the whole family went to a shopping centre in Switzerland and had dinner there as well. So that evening the children went to bed as usual and after Florence had had a particularly emotional phone call with her mother, ramon comforted her on the sofa. Prosecutors think later on in the trial that Florence had sort of fallen asleep on the sofa that night and then Ramon killed her by hitting her repeatedly with the rolling pin. By now it was Friday and the kids were awake and, with his dead wife in their bedroom, romain gave them cereal and they watched cartoons. According to the adversary book, rom Romain said, quote After I killed Florence, I knew that I was also going to kill Antoine and Caroline, and those moments in front of the TV were the last that we would spend together.
Speaker 1:So him and Caroline went upstairs. As Romain said, he was worried that she had a fever, so he wanted to take her temperature. He said that Caroline lay on the bed on her stomach Quote I shot Caroline the first time. She had a pillow over her head. I must have been pretending it was a game. I pulled the trigger. I called Antoine and I did it again.
Speaker 1:Now, importantly, a few days before this, on the Wednesday of that week, ramon has taken 2 000 francs from a cash machine in Lyon and bought a stun wand, two tear gas canisters, a box of cartridges and a silencer for a 22 caliber rifle from a gun shop there, and this is what he used to kill both his children. Now, after killing his children, romand went out to the shops and bought a paper, apparently seeming totally normal. He then drove to his parents' house. He had lunch with them. I'm sure they chatted sort of amiably over lunch and, like his children, he lured them both upstairs and shot and killed them both. Their beloved Labrador came upstairs to see what was going on and Roman shot and killed him too. He covered all the bodies with blankets and duvets and then went to clean himself up.
Speaker 1:That night Roman was due to go for dinner with Corrine, the woman that he had an affair with. She was still keen to get her money back from the investments, so I'm sure he assured her that it was coming and they could sort of discuss it over dinner. So he picked her up and was going to take her for a meal Instead of repaying her money. He tried to kill her. So they were in a car and I think he sort of pretended that it had broken down or something and he actually tried to strangle her and then sprayed tear gas in her face. She fought back. She screamed for him to think of her children, at which point he stopped trying to kill her and drove her home. She must have been absolutely terrified.
Speaker 1:He got back to his family home in the early hours and called Corrine multiple times. It is thought that he promised to give her the money on the Monday that was coming up. Instead, very early on that Monday morning he used the petrol he'd bought to set his house with his dead wife and children in it on fire. After setting the fire, he took some pills in attempts to end his life. Unbeknownst to him, the pills were over 10 years old, so weren't very effective. He did lose consciousness, but he was still alive. He did lose consciousness, but he was still alive. After being in a coma and regaining consciousness in the hospital, he initially denied that he had anything to do with the fire or the murders of his whole family.
Speaker 1:The lies of Ramond, the family annihilator, started unravelling in such a way that they wouldn't stop. In the weeks and months that followed the horrific murders of Florence, caroline, antoine, amé and Anne-Marie and the arrest of Jean-Claude Romand, luc L'Admiral continued to receive letters and cards from Romand from prison, awaiting trial and being assessed by many psychiatrists. Romand was clearly trying to elicit sympathy and connection from his longest standing friend. Luke. However, just couldn't compute what he had learned about Romand over the past few weeks and months. However, soon after the murders and Romand's confession, friends and family of the romans learned that it had all been a lie. Roman's whole life had been a lie. He had never worked for the who, he had never been on any work trips or even international conferences. More shockingly, he had never graduated medical school and was not a qualified doctor.
Speaker 1:Ramon had built a life for himself, florence and their children based on nearly two decades of lies, lies that started at the end of his second year of medical school, a second year of medical school that, unlike his friend Luke, ramon failed. He also failed to turn up for his exam reset and there started a lifetime of lies. It would have been so easy to rectify Just take the reset again, or maybe take the whole year again. Tell his friends and Florence that you know he has to just retake a year. It's frustrating, yeah, but in the grand scheme of things it's not that bad.
Speaker 1:But so accustomed was ramond to lying to those close to him, to not disappointing those close to him. He pretended that he had passed his second year and actually, from that day on, he re-enrolled in his second year every year for the next few years. So so, as his fellow students worked up through the years of medical school towards graduation, he re-enrolled and just went into the exams. He wasn't taking them. He was pretending to study, presumably reading all the right books and managing to get the papers from the right modules. No one noticed. No one noticed that his name wasn't on the same exam results as theirs. As the years went by, no one noticed that he was re-enrolling in the same year for many, many years and consistently not passing. His parents didn't notice that they were still presumably paying for him for years of university. And it seems so obvious, and it might seem so obvious to us now, but it worked.
Speaker 1:Ramon pretended to graduate with his peers and gave himself a grandiose job as a researcher with the WHO in Geneva as a career, and at the beginning he would actually drive to Geneva. He would go into the WHO headquarters and use their library and cafe and then come home and when he was supposedly going on work trips and conferences he would stay in motels, sometimes near airports, to bring back, like location specific gifts for his family. And, as we can probably work out, remand might have been able to like fabricate a career, but there was no way that he could fabricate a salary, so he started letting friends and family know that they could could take advantage of him working in Geneva and he could make investments for them. The money that they gave him to invest effectively financed his lifestyle. Apparently, it was around two and a half million francs all in all.
Speaker 1:By the time he was found out, ramon's appearance of a well-to-do member of his community, a successful family man who sits on the school board and is active in his children's life, was all built on lies. And I remember when I first heard about this case I was just really shocked, like how could someone get away with lies built on lies, built on lies for so long? But then, thinking about it, in the 80s and 90s there was no social media, no email, no smartphones, no websites. It was probably relatively easy to get away with people not knowing where you were or what you were doing. No one could check the WHO website for your work or see announcements about it on social media. Not many suspicions were raised when you know Florence didn't have her husband's office number or was never invited to his work Christmas party. It just seems that he got away with it.
Speaker 1:But one thing is for sure Jean-Claude Romand built those lies on the innocent members of his family, and they are the ones that paid for them. It is thought that the pressure of Corrine asking for her money back was what finally made him make the decision to kill his whole family and himself. It's a pressure that we have talked about in many episodes before, a pressure that who we have talked about in many episodes before, the anomic family annihilator who feels so trapped and wants to not only take his own life but that of his whole family as well, and this extended to his parents, who, presumably, romain thought, would be so disappointed if they know the truth. The one thing that really strikes me about this case, though, is obviously the planning. He'd obviously planned it for days, maybe months before, in terms of what he was going to do with his family, but then he was able to carry out seemingly normal tasks, like going to buy a paper after he'd killed his children. That really, you know, that really, really baffles me and will always continue to baffle me about family annihilators and how they can compartmentalise and just appear completely like they're living a normal day, even though they've just, you know, murdered their whole families.
Speaker 1:Now, roman was convicted of murder in 1996 in a trial that I'm sure would have been awful for Florence's family and friends. He ended up serving 26 years and, in 2019, was released from prison. It feels so unfair that this man who took the lives of five people, and not just any five people his wife, his children, his parents is now free to live in the world as he pleases. I think he's probably in his 70s now, so realistically, he could live for many years to come, and I understand that he has served his sentence, that he was handed down. It just doesn't seem like long enough. He is alive, he is free. Florence, caroline, antoine, amey and Anne-Marie were not given that chance. This episode is dedicated to Florence and her two children, caroline and Antoine, and to Jean-Claude Romand's parents, amé and Anne-Marie, to the lives they had, to the love they had and the joy they brought to friends, family and their communities. We remember them.
Speaker 1:This has been Killer in the Family podcast, written and produced by me, claire Laxton. I'll be back next week with a new episode. Don't forget to send any comments or questions to my Insta at Killer in the Family pod or through a text where I link in the episode notes. Do let me know any stories you'd like me to cover as well. Also, don't forget that you can buy me a coffee if you like the podcast and help support it's running no-transcript.
